Thingamabobs

EVENTS

Guy in bar: So, what brought you to Seattle?Me: I just started grad schoolGuy: What are you studying?Me: GeneticsGuy: Oh, I would have thought it would be more shallow-likeMe: … *eyes bug out*

While I think the details are irrelevant, I feel compelled to add that I wasn’t wearing anything that could be even remotely perceived as “shallow-like.” Jeans and a t-shirt, no makeup. Nope, I just had boobs.

Adjacent pic is from a whiteboard in a student clubroom at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry (or, as we call it, “Wood & Weed Science”). Someone had drawn a crude chart of plant floral induction pathway and another(?) person had made some additions, including labeling “mRNA” as “missionary RNA”. I thought your readers might want to explain in comments what exactly is “missionary RNA” :)

Missionary RNA…I wonder what it does? Maybe this is the mechanism behind gene conversion *ba dum ching* (For the non-biologists, the correct label is “messenger RNA”)

I loved Arctic Ape’s PS:

(By the way, almost all our student clubs are curriculum-related, but we’re still mostly not huge nerds. For example, the rest of the whiteboard featured a poop joke in Finnish.)

Poop jokes: A universal staple in graduate student humor.

This is post 21 of 49 ofBlogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliancehere.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Tuesday was my big end of the quarter research presentation, which means Tuesday night was my post-presentation celebration, and Wednesday was my recovery from my post-presentation celebration.
And right now I’m sitting in the Seattle airport, attempting to go back home to Indiana for a week. I say attempting because my flight is already delayed two hours thanks to thunderstorms in Chicago. Ahh, the midwest.
So…posts may be a little filler-y while I’m decompressing. My brain needs to be turned off for a bit before starting up summer research. Seriously, I know I’m stressed when I’m looking forward to going back to Indiana.

Consider this an open thread. What are you up to? What neat things have you read on the internet? Is there anything that could defeat a velociraptor with machine gun arms?

But I’m wary. Every time I say that about someone’s personal religious beliefs, they end up becoming an issue. The newest potential cause for drama? The University of Washington (where I go to school) finally decided on it’s new President – Michael K. Young. The thing that set off red flags? He’s a graduate of Brigham Young University and devout Mormon (which is probably redundant to say).

Now, I know it’s entirely possible to be religious and not let your beliefs interfere with your job at a secular university. I don’t expect his first act as university president to be increasing the number of Mormon missionaries that hunt you down on Red Square, or to expand the campus LDS center that’s right by my building.

In order to understand genuinely the world and all the things that we learn from secular sources, we should start the inquiry first from the perspective of the gospel and its basic truths. The rest of the world then begins to make much more sense. It isn’t so much that secular learning necessarily confirms the truth of the gospel in every instance, though I am frequently surprised with just how often it does exactly that, but rather that we much better understand the world and everything in it when we put the secular learning in a gospel context. In other words, if one first seeks the light of Christ and inspiration from the Lord, then inquiries about matters of science, politics, economics, history, indeed, society in general, are not only entirely acceptable, but likely to lead to a better understanding of the gospel and a stronger, not weaker, testimony. If we seek first the kingdom of God, then indeed all things will be added unto it.

Ah yes…the world makes so much more sense when you start with Mormon!Jesus. I’m sure all the non-Mormon researchers certainly appreciate that sentiment.

Please let the next 4 years be perfectly boring and free of blog fodder.

It’s that time of the quarter again, so don’t expect a lot of updates from me this week. This morning I got the lovely surprise that my end of the quarter departmental research presentation was being moved from Tuesday March 15th to Friday March 11th, eliminating four days of preparation that I would have really appreciated. On top of that our professor finally passed out our take home final exam two weeks late…and I have to finish that while scrambling to finish my research. Gah.

At least this means I’m done with the quarter much earlier, so I effectively get two weeks of spring break instead of one. If last quarter is any indication, I will be quite inebriated Friday night.

So yeah. No sleep for me this week, and if I blog at all it’ll probably be while on the bus, which is about the only chance I’ll have to read blogs or write my own. Though, I could use those extra minutes to read more papers… aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!

There’s another first year graduate student rotating in the same lab that I’m rotating in, though he’s working on a different project from me. How do our projects differ, you ask?

1st Year: *talking to another labmate about something completely off topic*Post doc: Hey, that’s five minutes you just wasted that could have gone toward curing autism!Me: That’s why I’m not studying autism.Post doc: *laughs* So you can waste as much time as you like?Me: Yep. Evolution’s not going anywhere!

Joking aside, I actually have been getting a lot of work done. For the fellow biologists: I run my first microarray on Tuesday! For the non-biologists: I get to do cool nerdy stuff I haven’t done before!

But grad school is also pretty cool. The new quarter has started, and here are my classes:

Advanced Genetic Analysis (first half) – basically how to set up experiments using a bazillion different genetic tricks in order to investigate, well, anything. You know how cool it was solving Punnett square problems? Yeah, it’s like that on steroids. …What do you mean Punnett squares aren’t cool?

Molecular Population Genetics and Evolution (second half)- I can’t wait for this class. Should rename it “Jen has a giant nerdgasm every Tuesday and Thursday.”

Introduction to Statistical and Computational Genomics – I know the title sounds scary, but this will likely be my easiest class. Half of the time is learning how to program in Python, which I pretty much already know. Probably won’t learn anything new until the last couple weeks, where we talk about classes. But the other half of the class is a lecture on bioinformatics, which I basically know nothing about, so that’ll be useful.

My lab rotation still is about human population genetics and evolution, but this time instead of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) I’m looking at copy number variants (CNVs). …If I was a good science blogger I would take the time to explain what those are, but I have to run to class. Sorry, you’re stuck with Wikipedia for now!

What am I up to? I’m writing a “fake” research proposal for one of my classes on doing a genome wide association study and exome sequencing to search for genetic components of homosexuality. I say “fake” because it’s a project for a class, not something I’m actually submitting to the NIH or NSF. Well, I mean, I could theoretically submit it as a grant if it ends up being super awesome and a mind-blowing scientific idea, but at this rate I’m just trying to not embarrass myself when turning it in.

On top of that I’m attempting to finish my actual research from this quarter since our presentations are next week. I’m not nervous about the speaking part – heck, I do that for fun now – but talking about science is a bit harder than making jokes about atheism. So, yeah, again – aiming for not embarrassing myself. Frantically trying to learn R to make my graphics, since my professor nearly had an aneurysm when he saw I was using Excel to make my charts.

Aren’t the end of quarters great?!

I know a lot of you are also students – consider this an open thread to complain about all the work you have to do and to procrastinate doing it. Non-students welcome to whine too.